Ohuhu Marginalisation: Okpara’s Ghost Must Be Weeping
Don Norman Obinna – Agu Ibeku –
An Igbo threadbare aphorism holds that an elder does not sit at home and watch the doe (she-goat) suffer the pain of childbirth tied to a rope.
In other words, an elder should take hard-headed action when things are about to go wrong in his presence.
This standard practice amplified my suspicion of the Ohuhu elders’ silence in the face of the disparaging violation of the clan’s political rights because it is an aberration to sit on the fence in political affairs.
The silence of the Ohuhu elders in the eight years of ostracisation of the clan in the equitable distribution of political representation in Ikwuano/Umuahia and the plan to extend it beyond 2023 denote acquiescence.
After Hon. Acho Obioma, Emeka Atuma, Stanley Ohajiruka and Udo Ibeji from Umu Okpara, Ikwuano, Ibeku and Old Umuahia represented the Ikwuano/Umuahia Federal Constituency correspondingly, 2015, was unarguably the turn of the Ohuhu man, except for the insatiable power obsession of Ochendo.
Because it would amount to a strange quirk of fate for two Umuahia men to represent the constituency at the National Assembly (Red/Green Chambers) simultaneously in 2015, Ochendo upset the political arrangement.
To achieve his inordinate political ambition of being a senator, the Ohuhu clan became the victim. Amid remonstration, Ochendo forcefully imposed Hon. Sam Onuigbo (from Ikwuano) on us.
His pernicious quest to serve two terms deprived the Ohuhus further and created disequilibrium that gave the Ikwuano clan an advantage over others in the sharing formulae.
Of the 24 years of representation (1999 – 2023), the Ikwuano clan has done 12 years, thanks to Ochendo, our self-proclaimed father of equity.
Sadly, he committed the Ohuhu political ostracisation while promoting the precept of the Abia Charter of Equity.
Politics is a game of interests. It explains why aficionados defined it as the activity (negotiation, argument, discussion, application of force, persuasion) applied in dispute resolution.
If the above was what politics entails, why are the Ohuhu elders quiet over another objectionable infraction of their political rights after enduring the injustice of 2015?
Conceding political rights to a father and his son at a stretch is tantamount to slavery. Besides, it questions the political will-power and integrity of the Ohuhu elders.
What will they tell their children in the future? That they sold their birthright for a pot of potage? It is a shame that the Ohuhu elders want to erase the legacies of the late M.I. Okpara.
If ghosts could see, he would weep in his grave, seeing his clan fatally sliding into political oblivion because of the Ohuhu elders dithering and seeming concession.
I do not know what has happened to the well-respected Ohuhu clan. Their enviable literacy level and the late Okpara’s political precedence inspired some of us from the Ibeku kingdom to embrace education.
The late eastern premier defied the odds to place the Ohuhu clan and, by extension, the entire Umuahia on the political annals of Nigeria.
Sadly, the subjugator of the Ohuhu clan used the Abia Charter of Equity he masterminded to achieve political gains and ascendancy at the detriment of the Ohuhu people.
I dare to ask, which Ohuhu man has achieved political ascendancy in Abia State? Why drum support for Chinedum Orji against your sons, Chief Obi Aguocha and Obinna Nwosu? It is shameful.
Mmanu akara di uto, onye ratu ibe ya ratu. It is the turn of the Ohuhu clan to produce the next House of Reps, member.
All the elders need to do is rise against this injustice, and the rest of us will show solidarity with our PVCs on Saturday, 25 February 2023.
